The Good Omens of Haruhi Suzumiya
by EarthScorpion
Summary: You know, it's rather surprising how these unknowing god-like entities all seem to collect small gangs which they drag on adventures on a whim. And if Adam Young and Haruhi Suzumiya spend too much time in close proximity, the world might just end. Again.
1. DRAMATIS PERSONAE

**The Good Omens of Haruhi Suzumiya**

A Narrative of Certain Manifold Events occurring in the last days of mankind, in strict agreement * with:

_The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter_

* Well, fairly strict agreement. For certain values of strict.

Narrated by the individual known, to his most clear displeasure, as Kyon.

_DRAMATIS PERSONAE_

Please note; appearance in the DRAMATIS PERSONAE is no guarantee of actual appearance in the story.

_SUPERNATURAL BEINGS_

God (A God)

Metatron (The Voice of God)

Aziraphale (An Angel, and part-time book dealer)

Satan (A Fallen Angel; the Adversary)

Beelzebub (A Likewise Fallen Angel, and Prince of Hell)

Hastur (A Likewise Likewise Fallen Angel, and Duke of Hell. Not to be confused with Hastur (see below))

Ligur (A Likewise Likewise Likewise Fallen Angel, and Duke of Hell)

Crowley (An Angel who did no much Fall as sort of Stumble and Twist His Ankle in a Way Most Painful)

Azathoth (A God)

Nyarlathotep (A God, Soul of the Outer Gods, and Also a Dick)

Cthulhu (A High Priest of The Outer Gods, and an Eldritch Abomination)

Hastur (An Eldritch Abomination. Not to be confused with Hastur (see above)

_APOCALYPTIC HORSEPERSONAGES_

DEATH (Death)

War (War)

Famine (Famine)

Pollution (Pollution)

_HUMANS_

Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifier (A Witchfinder)

Agnes Nutter (A Prophetess)

Newton Pulsifier (Wages Clerk and Witchfinder Private)

Anathema Device (A Practical Occultist and Also a Professional Decendent)

Shadwell (A Witchfinder Sergeant)

Madame Tracy (Painted Jezebel [Mornings only, Thursdays by arrangement) and Medium)

Sister Mary Loquacious (A Satanic Nun of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl [retired] and Owner of the Tadfield Manor Conference and Management Training Centre)

Mr Young (A Father)

Mr Tyler (A Chairman of a Resident's Association)

A Delivery Man

Kyon's Little Sister (A Little Sister)

Tsuruya (A Girl, an Individual Who Once Beat Up A Bear, and Heir to the Tsuruya Family)

Taniguchi (A Boy and one of Those Two Guys)

Kunikida (A Boy, and the other one of Those Two Guys)

_TIME TRAVELLERS_

Mikuru (elder) (A Woman and Her Own Superior Officer)

John Smith (A Doctor. Not to be confused with Kyon when he's calling himself John Smith)

_ESPERS_

Mori (A Maid, Habitual Skydiver, and Head of the Organisation)

Arakawa (A Butler, and a Member of the Organisation)

_ALIENS_

The Integrated Data Entity (A Sufficiently Advanced Artificial Intelligence)

The Macrospatial Quantum Cosmic Existence (A Likewise Sufficiently Advanced Artificial Intelligence)

Ryoko Asakura (A Somewhat Diminished Humanoid Data Interface of the Integrated Data Entity in the form of a Girl)

Emiri Kimidori (A Humanoid Data Interface of the Integrated Data Entity in the form of a Girl)

_THEM_

ADAM (An Antichrist... perhaps)

Pepper (A Girl)

Wensleydale (A Boy)

Brian (A Boy)

_THE SOS BRIGADE_

HARUHI SUZUMIYA (A God/Autoevolutionary Potential/ Time Quake/ Antichrist / Delete as Applicable)

Kyon (A Boy, and Also a Deadpan Snarker most Caustic)

Mikuru Asahina (younger) (A Girl, and Also a Time Traveller)

Yuki Nagato (A Humanoid Data Interface of the Integrated Data Entity in the form of a Girl)

Itsuki Koizumi (A Boy, and Also an Esper)

_THE ANTI-SOS BRIGADE_

SASAKI (You Know, I'm Not Even Going To Go There. Does Anyone Have a Clue What is Going On There?)

Fujiwara (A Sneering Bastard, and Also a Time Traveller)

Kuyou Suou ( A Humanoid Data Interface of the Macrospatial Quantum Cosmic Existence in the form of a Girl)

Kyouko Tachibana (A Girl, and Also an Esper)

_THE GENDER-FLIPPED SOS BRIGADE_

HARUKI SUZUMIYA (A God/Autoevolutionary Potential/ Time Quake/ Antichrist / Delete as Applicable)

Kyonko (A Girl, and Also a Deadpan Snarker most Caustic)

Mitsuru Asahina (younger) (A Boy, and Also a Time Traveller)

Yuuki Nagato (A Humanoid Data Interface of the Integrated Data Entity in the form of a Boy)

Itsuko Koizumi (A Girl, and Also an Esper)

Full Chorus of Tibetans, Atlanteans, Lemurians, Deep Ones, Americans, Japanese, the English, and other strange and frequently Loathesome Beings which do Herald the End of the World.

_AND:_

Dog (Satanic Hellhound and cat-worrier)

Shamisen (A Intermittently Sapient Cat)

Mister Kimidori (A Balloon Dog)


	2. Irrevocable Narrative Commencement

**Irrevocable Narrative Commencement**

In all fairness, I should have expected something like this to happen.

...

Actually, wait a moment. That is a complete lie. There is no way that I could ever, ever have expected something like this to happen, even if I had broken one-hundred and eight mirrors using ladders with black cats tied to the end. While standing on the cracks in a pavement. And other such bad-luck related superstitions.

However, nonetheless, I should have expected that something bad would happen when Haruhi Suzumiya suddenly got it into her head that it would be a brilliant idea to submit as many postcards to as many competitions as possible, in the hope of winning a prize for the winter vacations.

What I could not expect was the form which the badness took. And if anyone else could have, they would be busy rolling in their winnings from the stock market while progressing steadily on their way towards complete and total global domination through their superior prescience. Well, they'd also have been confined to an insane asylum, because the form these events took were completely mad, but at least they'd have been the richest madman in the world.

At this point, I'm supposed to say that, in retrospect, all the warning signs were there already. Well, that's a lie. Reality doesn't work like that. You don't get nice easy early warnings which tell you which of Haruhi's whims can be safely indulged to prevent her from destroying the world in a fit of pique or boredom, and which will have a worrying propensity for complete and utter global annihilation if they are carried out. Sometimes they can even fit in both categories, which is a clear sign that Gödel has been mucking around with my categories.

At this point in time, it was still October. I sat in the clubroom, rain beating at the window, really not wanting to have to walk home, and soundly thrashing Koizumi at some imported boardgame. We were having to refer to a printed out translation of the rules, given that the ones which had come with the game were in German and thus mutually unintelligible to both of us. Sadly it appeared that the person who had performed the translation not only was not quite fluent in German, but was sadly deficient in the Japanese language too. As a consequence, the train networks we were meant to be building across Europe had snarled into a morass of confusion, as I leafed furiously through the papers, trying to find out what happened if three tracks ran into the same node on the grid.

Any travelling salesman attempting to sell his wares around this transport network would have end up profoundly lost.

However, that would have been the least of his worries, as the horrifically enthusiastic bane of my life, accompanied by a green-haired, befanged _agent provocative_ proceeded to bound into the room, leaving the door banging against the wall and proceeded to dump two armfuls of postcards onto the table, drowning our nascent transport monopolies beneath a cataclysmic hail of while paper.

"Was there a reason..." I began to protest, but Haruhi cut me off immediately.

"Good news, everyone!"

Never trust a sentence that begins with "Good news". It won't be. I glanced over at Asahina-san, who had been, before Haruhi's rude interruption, been brewing tea for us all. She had recoiled at the Brigade Leader's entry, tray clutched up against her chest, the look of helplessness at the inevitable depredations that sociopath would inflict upon her evident. Actually, a sentence that began that way from those lips could not help but be good news. Even if she was communicating the most fell of communiques, reality itself would alter so that anything she said would be a broad benevolence upon the land.

And not alter reality in accordance with the horrific whimsies of Haruhi, no. Any world that Asahina-san would create would be utterly beautiful, warm and fluffy and, all in all, far too good for such lifeforms as us. Indeed, compared to the demented Sophia even now glaring at me, such a place would be an emanation of the Monad.

"We're going to have won prizes for Winter Break."

And how exactly are you going to do that, I might ask?

"You underestimate the brilliance of your Brigade Leader, Kyon. I will remember this act of insubordination!"

Great. More fines. As if my wallet was not already strained enough by the relentless series of blatant thefts ordered by Haruhi.

"It's quite simple, simple enough that even you can understand it. That means it must be easy, right?"

Enough with the pointless insults and get to the point!

Haruhi pulled off her backpack, and produced a large number of magazines which I was quite surprised had fit in the rather flimsy looking bag.

"Ah," said Koizumi, smiling. "We're going to fill in application forms for each of these contests separately, thus producing five different addresses in different handwritings, and thus increasing our chance of winning. Ingenious!"

Stop smiling like that! It makes you look like an idiot. And anyway, that exposition was entirely pointless, because it's obvious that is what she was planning. And your brown-nosing is simply annoying; she doesn't need encouraging. I hope you get carpal tunnel syndrome from what we're about to be subjected to. It's not ingenious; it's an obvious ploy that has been done by lots of people before. You'd say the same thing if she suggested building a wooden horse and leaving it outside the Computer Club Society room.

...

You know, I am never going to mention that idea in public, or even think it too close to Haruhi, because she would find nothing wrong with it, and would probably get enthusiastic and make me start carrying wood all the way up the hill.

"Five points to the SOS Brigade Vice Commander!" declared Haruhi triumphantly. "But only five, because he didn't go far enough. You see, they're not going to remember individual addresses. So if we each hand-write five different applications for each competition, and put each others addresses, they won't suspect a thing."

That's still only twenty five applications per competition. Probability is still against us.

"That's why our slaves from the Computer Society will do it too. We own them now, remember."

I had been hoping we could forget about the whole incident.

"Nonsense! Once you're in the SOS Brigade, you're in the SOS Brigade. Forever!"

So. My fate enunciated. It would have come as more of a shock had I not really know that I was doomed all along.

"How did you get involved in this, Tsuraya-san?" I asked, hoping to delay this torment for as long as possible.

She shrugged, a one-shouldered movement that had far too much enthusiasm. "It seemed like fun. Also, my family owns quite a few of these companies that run the prize draws, so it's not like I can enter normally."

Ah. It's all obvious, isn't it. You even suggested it to Haruhi. Honestly, you're as bad as Koizumi.

Even then, I suspected that it would turn out like the island trip at the start of that endless summer. As it turned out, I was completely wrong; a faked murder-mystery would have been far preferable to the insanity which actually ensued.

"Stop insulting the Deputy Brigade Leader and start filling in forms, subordinate!" was the command I got.

Yes, highest.

The radiant beauty in the corner of the room timorously raised a hand.

"Yes, Mikuru-chan?" the terror inquisited.

"Well... um," she began, fingers twining around one of her gorgeous locks of hair. I really have to say that someone of her beauty is wasted upon the ingrates who so casually surround her. There are two types of people who surround her; the slobbering fools like Taniguchi who only seem to see her as a rank in their infernal charts of beauty that cannot grasp the cardinality of her divinity, and Haruhi, who sees her as some kind of personal tool for habitual abuse and use as a clothing dummy.

Not that such clothing, such as the maid garment that she wears right now, is quite the unbridled curse; far from it. Loathe though I am to admit it, Haruhi is very good at picking clothes for Mikuru, even though the ordeals that the poor girl is put through rend at my heart.

"Where are... that is, what places are the competitions offering as prizes?" the beauty questioned, quite reasonably worried that whatever happened, Haruhi would use it as an opportunity for another round of apathetic abuse.

Haruhi, of course, grinned widely. "Lots of places! Awesome places. We've got," she began flicking though the torn out pieces of magazine and printed out pieces of paper on the table, "Paris... Paris is good. It has evil hunchbacks living in the churches and masked villains living on the sewers. You know, that's something I never got. Why does the hunchback live out in the fresh air when he's really ugly and probably smells, while the masked organ player is actually quite handsome and mysterious in that mask and so should be on the rooftops, brooding, so the investigators can look up at him and get mysterious clues?"

Why? Because that's not at all how the books went. I bet you've never even read them. And now you're trying to enforce modern ideas of plot on books written...well, I'm not exactly sure when they were written... the 1800s maybe? Anyway, plots in books, especially, old books don't work like they would in an anime.

Asahina-san's eyes widened as Haruhi began to rattle off all the places that she wanted to go to, mainly connected to the stereotypes associated with them; stereotypes she mutilated much as she did the Paris one. I know you're not stupid, Haruhi; come to think of it, you're annoyingly intelligent, so why don't you pay any attention when reading? Did you just go to some website and read the summaries of the plots, so that you wouldn't have to sit down and read quietly?

Oh, please just sit down and read quietly. For once in your life. Please.

"...and then there's the Canadian Grand Railway Hotels Tours contest." She frowned. "I don't remember picking up this one. Why is it here, Tsuraya?"

The green-haired girl shrugged in a somewhat excessively energetic motion. Seriously, how do you get hair like that. It reaches down to the back of your knees, for goodness sake. And it's green! That's not natural. The only people who don't have real hair colours are people like Yuki, and I'm sure that you're not a Humanoid Data Interface. You just drift along as an honorary sixth member of the SOS Brigade.

"Shush, Kyon," Haruhi said idly, flapping her hand in my direction. "Honestly, hotels and trains? That's boring."

"Murders happen on trains, of course," interjected Koizumi. Shut up, you idiot. She doesn't need any more ideas. Let's just hope that Haruhi has the good sense to ignore you.

As it turned out, she did ignore him, although not due to the presence of anything which could be deemed common sense. "But we've done that before, Koizumi-kun. Murders in a closed circle are easy."

Meh, close enough. I'll take my victories where I can.

The Brigade Chief promptly tore the article in half, screwed them into little balls, and bounced them off the wall above the head of the delightful Asahina-san (prompting an adorable squeak, like a kitten). What makes it worse is that she managed to land them both in the bin, even though Tsuraya-san was standing in the way of her line of sight.

So very annoying...

"So... we're certainly going somewhere over the winter break?" asked Asahina-san, after she had recovered from the trauma of Haruhi risking her life through such careless use of paper projectiles. "Are those all of them?"

"I think so," the tyrant replied. "Oh, wait, there's one more."

Let's just get this over and done with.

"'Win an all-expenses trip to Great Britain, the most haunted place on Earth!'", she read with a crescendo of excitement in her voice. "'You will be staying in the ancient Tadfield Manor. The modern site was originally constructed as a plague hospital in 1568, funded by the de la Poer family, who infamously were all murdered in the 17th century by a member of the family, who fled to the United States.' Plague hospitals! Murder and horror! It's perfect for supernatural terror!"

Or, alternatively, it was a hospital endowed by a wealthy family, who, over 100 years later, were murdered by a member of the family for their money and nothing exciting was going on.

"Silence, Kyon. Do not interrupt me while I am reading! 'The Manor was demolished in the English Civil War, when the survivors of the Battle of Tadfield were herded inside and the building was set alight.' Even better! 'The Manor was rebuilt after the war, and later became an insane asylum, and then a orphanage, known at that time as the Tadfield Cradle.'"

I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Nagato fold her book closed and stare intently at Haruhi. You could have said something earlier against this insanity, Nagato!

"'The Cradle burned down when an inmate broke free, taking over the asylum temporarily under the name '''King No-One''', before the authorities cut the supplies of food, the madmen setting fire to the Cradle as an act of revenge as they died.' Madmen and orphanages! Is there any way that it could be better! That place looks to just be rife with mysteries."

Yes. It does, doesn't it. I blame you personally for that. And also Koizumi, I blame you too. You had to put the idea in her head that she was an Ultra Detective with the whole Island Murder thing. When we're having to deal with ghosts (which will probably be some kind of data lifeform, going by past experience), I'll will say that I told you so. And it will be so cathartic as to get me executed as a heretic by the early Catholic Church.

"'The Manor was rebuilt in the late 1800s by the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl, an order of nuns.' You know, they're probably satanic nuns. True fact; over 66.6% of all nuns actually worship Satan, and 9% of the remainder are devoted to hunting them down with both gadgets and magical powers."

What. What. What the hell? Where did that statistic come from? Why... why would you even think that? It's so unbelievably stupid as to cause complete mental shut-down. And anyway, what, under this model, do the other 24.4% of nuns do?

"Why, they do nunly things. You know, praying, sleeping with the priests, being sacrificed by the satanic nuns. What normal nuns do. Now, if you're done interrupting..."

I'm not, but you've decided that you're not going to listen to me, so nothing I say will do any good anyway.

"Nice to know that you know your place, subordinate. Anyway, it says that eleven years ago the Manor burned down again, and the nuns left. It's obvious that there's some kind of fire spirit living there which feeds off the flames. Well, either that or the nuns were summoning something utterly evil and they lost control. Or perhaps that the murderer from that noble family came back from the dead to slake his thirst and the magical nuns had to burn down the place to kill the vampire."

Where did vampires come from?

"Transylvania, Kyon. You're really stupid, you know that. The point is, that place is full of mysteries."

Look, it may have had some occurrences, but this is basically a ghost-hunting trip. Of course they'll exaggerate what happened, and possibly just make it up if they won't get caught. And, anyway, nothing that demon-worshipping nun could summon would be less malevolent than you. You make the Antichrist look like a nice person.

And, no, just so you know, it's obvious that the Antichrist or any other demons or spirits or ghosts weren't involved in the fire eleven years. I know this, because if they had, it would have happened three years ago. Three years ago, like everything that happens that breaks the nice, solid, comforting laws of reality.

You realise how much I hate three years ago, right? I've lived through that episode far too many times. Most people only had to do it once. I did it once, completely ignorant of what was happening. Then, in the past six months, I've lived through that day three years ago several more times.

Man, I don't know how I can even think that sentence and have it make sense. Mind you, I've also had a Tanabata last three years, so I've been through a lot.

I hate time travel. Not time travellers, I might hasten to add, because anyone who could hate one specific time traveller (or possibly two, depending on whether you count Asahina-san (younger) and Asahina-san (elder) as separate individuals. I suppose that from their viewpoints... well, from their viewpoints if Asahina-san (younger) knew that Asahina-san (elder) existed...

(Have I mentioned that I hate time travel?)

... then for Asahina-san (younger), Asahina-san (elder) is a separate person, as she is not her yet (and may not be, depending on how time-travel works), but for Asahina-san (elder), Asahina-san (younger) is just her past.

Actually, that's a point. Is Asahina-san (elder) always the same person when I meet her? Logically, chaos theory would predict that the emergent changes to the timeline should radically change the future every time anything loops back into itself (unless the time-travel always had to happen), but on the other hand, I was told that the timeplanes aren't related and so don't link to each other, like a series of still frames in a film projector.

Whatever. I prefer not to think about it.

However, I found, as I shifted my attention back to the room, that the internal monologue had mean that I had not been subjected to any more of Haruhi's mutilation of historical fact in the name of excitement and fun. The downside of that was the fact that she was now staring at me, with that look (the one of mixed pity, condescension, annoyance and contempt) which meant she was waiting for me to answer.

Nevertheless, I tried my best.

"I think this needs to be thought over..." I began.

"What exactly needs to be thought over!" she shot back.

Dammit, Haruhi, don't ask me questions like that. You should be able to tell that I wasn't paying any attention.

"There are some aspects to what is going to happen that need to be looked at again before we can be sure that other issues are overcome," I stated. "I would not not say that it is a poor idea in the extreme, but rather that its converse is false not only on a superficial, although to a cursory look it would appear to be opposed, level and thus some of the lack of verity of the opposite of the statement is naturally not opposed to being untrue.

Hah! Make that sentence make sense, I dare you! Unweave that morass of overlapping negatives and nested clauses! Make sense of it!

I'm not quite sure what I said, in all fairness.

Haruhi, of course, just caught me in a level gaze, her mouth curved disapprovingly down at the sides.

"Kyon. You're coming with me while we collect my Computer Club serfs to force them to fulfil their treaty obligations."

Damn. Wrong question.

Her face broke out into a grin of dubious sanity.

"Everyone! We're just going to dedicate ourselves to filling out as many forms as possible for that one competition, so we can win. And if you all do your best and beat the quotas for filling out entry forms that I am setting you, I'm sure you will win." Her face took on a stern look. "And if we don't win, there will be punishments! Punishments!

And with that said, she dragged me out of my chair, yanking me out of the room all the way to next door.

"We're going to win, I just know it!" she said to me, eyes shining.

She knocked on the door to the Computer Club.

And after hearing that, it wasn't with much surprise I found myself packing my bags in late December. After that statement, it wasn't as if we were going to lose.


	3. Predetermined Aeronautical Elevation

**The Good Omens of Haruhi Suzumiya**

**Chapter 2: Predetermined Aeronautical Elevation**

* * *

It took far, far too little time for Haruhi to decide that a head impact that puts you in a coma for three days was insufficient reason to cancel the group trip. Especially since some ill-defined-but-really-serious-honestly-real thing had happened, which had lead to school ending early, and thus she didn't have anything to distract her hyperactive mind from whipping herself into a frenzy over the idea that she might not get to go on a trip which she had, in some undefinable way, earned.

She didn't accuse me of deliberately falling down the stairs, but I had a feeling that, if it did end up making us miss the trip, she would be thinking it very hard.

Of course, I never fell down the stairs and put myself in a coma. And anyone who says otherwise may happen to have all physical evidence on their side, but that just shows that the will of the Demiurge overrides the Platonic nature of existence, the events we see being nothing more that the shadows cast by puppets against the cave wall of existence.

I refuse to think what the source of the light or the hand-puppets in this metaphor might be.

I was stabbed by a person who in the normal reality was a psychopathic reality-warping artificial intelligence inside self-created human body aiming to provoke what she believed was the source of data auto-evolution, but in the particular history where the event happened, was "merely" a psychopathic human with a knife and definite _yandere _tendencies. Just to make it clear.

What is up with my life that makes that the real explanation? Why could I not have just fallen down the stairs?

Well, I did. All empirical evidence points that way, even though it may not have happened. That is to say, I haven't experienced it, and thus it doesn't exist for me, even though it may for other people.

Great. Now I'm venturing into solipsism. Isn't that meant to be Haruhi's territory in the SOS Brigade?

I hate time travel, by the way. Add another Tanabata-from-three-years-ago that I have lived through, please. And I happen to know that there will be another one fairly soon, because I, (unlike the ever-charming Asahina-san (small), who for all her virtues is somewhat inattentive) managed to catch a little glimpse of myself. That is, a myself who has not been me yet so I must become him so that I can continue to be me.

...

I hate time travel. All people except from Asahina-san (small) should stick in their own damn time plane.

...

All this (and more) ran through my head as I stuffed various items of clothing into a bag, before being made to remove them and fold them nicely when my mother found what I was doing. And all this was being done to the chorus of complaints from my little sister, who found it all profoundly unfair that I was getting to do something when she wasn't.

Yes, you're a younger sibling. Does that mean you have to be so _annoying _about it?

"But Kyoo~ooon," she whined, "I want to go. Can't you just win another ticket? I mean, if you were lucky like this, doesn't it mean that you'll be lucky again?"

Yes. But you don't know that, so it doesn't count. Unless... I squinted at my little sister. Is it possible that a top secret faction of small annoying children have begun to monitor Haruhi? Possibly led by Haruhi's super-secret evil twin, who she accidentally wished out of existence, but who remains somehow lodged in her subconscious, and oh my, this must be how Haruhi feels _all the time_.

The head trauma must have been worse than even the doctors thought.

I kid, I kid.

Anyway, once that was out of the way, I managed to get myself to bed, after only a small barrage, company level at most, of medical tests from my mother, who was still concerned that I should not be going abroad after a severe injury. And, indeed, I was a little concerned. However, she had been mollified by the fact that, upon examining the forms, there was a guarantee of best-quality medical care paid for by the travel company; a fact which I am pretty sure I have one of two people, and probably the one whose name starts with "K" to thank.

So, thanks awfully, person whose name starts with "K". Unless it was the person whose name starts with "H".

And 'Kyon' isn't my name, despite the fact that everybody insists on calling me it, so I'm not the person whose name starts with 'K'. Just to make it absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent clear which eternally smirking person I'm talking about.

"Anyway," I told my little sister, "there's no way that you can get away with trying to hide in my hand luggage or anything like that. International security checks and things like that mean that that sort of thing just doesn't work. You'd be caught by the scanners."

"Not if I had a ticket," she interrupted. Annoyingly. "And I can still hide in your suitcase, as long as I don't tell you."

"You _don't_ have a ticket," I told her. "There's no way, ever, that a little girl could be hidden in someone's suitcase, so just forget about it, okay?"

"But if I did..."

"You don't." I threw my hands up in the air. How hard is it apparently for her to understand that she doesn't have a ticket, and thus there is no way that she is coming with me? Groaning, I set myself to ignore her for the rest of the day, which passed relatively peacefully, apart from a visit from Taniguchi and Kunikida, who, on the plus side, had bought fruit – albeit rather late, as I was already back from hospital, but on the negative side, insisted on staying around for rather longer than I had liked. I finally managed to get rid of them by pointing out that I had to be up early and needed sleep, and so, with final checks showing I was prepared, I went to sleep.

...

I record the dream I had that night purely out of intellectual curiosity, and for amusement. It clearly wasn't real, because that would be nonsensical. Right?

Yeah, right.

Anyway, at some point within the dream, I opened my eyes, to find myself sitting at a table. A mah-jong table, in fact, I realised quickly, from the fact that it seemed to come in the same box as the one which Koizumi and I had played in the SOS Brigade clubhouse.

"Ah, Kyon," said the individual sitting opposite to me, putting both forelimbs in front of his face. "Welcome."

I paused, and boggled slightly. "You're a green balloon dog," I informed him.

"Call me Kimidori-san," the balloon-dog instructed me.

I opened my mouth, to object to that.

I closed my mouth.

"Very wise, very wise," said Shamisen, licking one paw, and washing his ear.

I whirled to glare at the male calico cat, who I had ended up adopting after the production of Haruhi's film. "What are you doing here?" I snapped at him. "And why are you talking again?"

The cat yawned. "Again with the assumptions," he said. "Once more, you assume that I am talking to you, rather than me making noises which happen, by slightest chance, to sound like human speech."

"We're not getting into that again," I told the cat, quite clearly. "Why are you here, talking to... to a balloon-dog? In the dream of course."

"Woof," said the third participant at the table, a small mongrel of a dog, who was nevertheless sitting at the table. Three things about it caught my attention. Firstly, one of its ears was strangely turned inside-out. Secondly, there was a distinct whiff of sulphur about it. Thirdly, both its eyes burned with the fires of hell. Well, at least, the fires of certain circles of hell; some are rather chilly and not at all on fire.

"This dream doesn't even make much sense," I protested. "Why does the dog not speak, when you two do?"

"Dog has his ways," Shamisen informed me, in a tone of voice which sounded rather too much like Koizumi for me to feel safe. "And do not let his shape fool you. He is a _hellishly_ good player, if you know what I mean. Aha."

"Shamisen," Kimidori-san said, putting one green balloon foreleg to his face with a sigh, "that is not a helpful line of approach. We have called him here to convey great and mighty facts to him, for troubled times lie ahead."

"I'm a cat. I'm doing it wrong if I am being helpful."

"That's it!" I announced. "I'm being dragged on holiday by Haruhi today, and trying to grab some sleep. There is no way I should be made to put up with this."

"Woof," said the more-normal of the two dogs at the table, offering a teapot to me.

"No, I don't want tea! I want a good night's sleep! And... and I think there's probably a doormouse in that teapot!"

"Really?" Shamisen said with great interest, leaning over to check within. His face fell. "There isn't a doormouse," he reported. "And you had got my hopes up, Kyon."

I folded my arms. "This is it!" I shouted, sitting bolt upright and opening my eyes. The darkness of my room was all that I could see, the distant light of my alarm clock, revealing that there was still an hour before I had to be up to get a taxi to the airport.

"At least I didn't have to find Mount Fuji, a mislabelled crane and an eggplant this time," I muttered to myself, as I got dressed.

Anyway, it was still dark by the time that the taxi arrived at the airport, and I was greeted by a disgustingly cheerful and awake Haruhi, who was far too Haruhi-like for 4am. Likewise, I was not feeling well inclined towards Koizumi and his immaculately pressed and clean suit. The sight of Nagato in something which was not a school uniform was a radical enough shock that I could not feel ill-inclined towards her, although I stirred slightly uncomfortably, because the memory of my dream was familiar enough that I could not help but feel slightly ill at ease. Of the radiant beauty of Asahina-san, there was no sign.

"Kyon, you're not the latest!" Haruhi greeted me with her normal charm. "Well done, you're improving... unless it turns out that it wasn't Mikuru-chan's fault that she's late, of course, which means that you're still the latest!"

That is completely not fair, and you know it. You've even taken 'I had a puncture' to be an invalid excuse for me being late.

"Stop complaining, Kyon," she said, with a sideways glance, tapping her foot. "I wonder what's taking her so long."

That would, of course, have been the best time for her to show up, and, despite the pre-dawn cold, act like a sun to us all. In fact, we had to wait fifteen minutes, and Haruhi was starting to get snappy, and made me buy her and everyone else a coffee, despite my protests that this was a grotesquely unfair abuse of my wallet.

"I'm so, so sorry I'm late," a nervous voice called out, running with her case trailing behind her. It was our fair lost princess, and she was, of course, eminently forgiveable, especially when her reason was given. "The traffic was very bad and..."

"Bad! Bad Mikuru-chan," Haruhi shouted, pouncing on poor Asahina-san, and subjecting her cheeks to a pinching most cruel. "Making us wait so long. It's just as well I planned for this and gave us all time to spare."

You mean I didn't actually need to be up at this ungodly hour?

"Silence, Kyon, don't question your leader's orders!" Haruhi released her victim, and, with a shouted command of "To the check-in", led us onwards in our glorious adventure. Oh joy. Despite my initial pessimism, the trip through security was far less troublesome than I might have thought. Haruhi managed to keep her urges under control, and managed to get through the baggage handing and the scans and the talk with the man at the desk with not one mention of espers, time-travellers, ghosts, vampires, aliens, witches, and tentacle monsters, and only one mention of magical girls. And in her defence, that was in response to the man at the desk and his insensitive claims that Haruhi's passport photo made her look like one.

Buddy, you don't know half of it.

In fact, the only mild trouble was almost caused by Nagato, whose bags triggered an alarm, one of the security guards moving to examine her things.

I sidled up to Nagato, and noticed that her lips were moving. "Do... do you have anything you're not meant to have?" I whispered to her. "In there, I mean."

She blinked once. "I do not have any thing that I am not meant to have," she said, simply.

I relaxed. "Yes, of course, you have better ways to..."

"I do not have any thing that I am not meant to have," she repeated.

"Okay, okay." I massaged the back of my neck with my hand, and yawned. "Urgh, it is far too early in the morning to be this early in the morning."

Nagato stared back, impassively.

"Heh, yes, I guess that didn't make much sense," I admitted, and yawned again.

"One could always query if this time can truly be said to exist if you are never awake to experience it. Without gnosis, the experience, one can only ever know things in an academic sense, and..."

"I'm not listening," I informed Koizumi, as the security guard approached Nagato, and apologised for the false alarm; apparently it was just a random search.

"Just kidding," he said with a shrug. "That's not what I believe, anyway. I'm just trying to wake you up long enough that you can make it to the plane without us having to carry you."

I gave him a glare through bleary eyes. "I'm flattered by your concern for my well-being, I told him."

And, it must be said, I did manage to stay awake long enough to get onto the plane, and for us to take off. Haruhi, on my left, had already started up a film, but I had settled for unwrapping the blanket provided, and snuggling down into the warmth, to try to catch up on my sleep, which had been rather interrupted, and left me almost as tired as I had gone to bed. Just as I was dozing off, I noticed Nagato coming back from the toilet, bag in hand. She had a rather prominent red mark on her forehead, as if she had hit it on something. "Are you all right?" I asked, stirring slightly under my blanket. "That looks painful... when did you get that?"

One pale hand went to her forehead. "Turbulence. I fell. Banged my head into the mirror," Nagato replied.

I can only say that my tired state was the reason I didn't ask further, because Nagato is... well, she's not clumsy, and I hadn't felt any turbulence. But in the fogginess that was my mind, I had got an explanation, and with that said, I snuggled further down under my blanket, and fell asleep.


End file.
